A MAN accused of aggressive begging must wait two weeks to discover if he is to be banned from Liverpool city centre.

A MAN accused of aggressive begging must wait two weeks to discover if he is to be banned from Liverpool city centre.

The city council wants to impose an anti-social behaviour order on Bernard James McCartney.

It is alleged the unemployed 31-year-old harassed passersby for money. McCartney, of no fixed abode, denied the allegation at Liverpool magistrates court yesterday (Wednesday, May 1).

District Judge Aled Jones was told police officers had spotted McCartney aggressively begging on several occasions in the city centre between February and October last year.

The court heard he had pleaded guilty and been convicted of begging offences on past occasions, but McCartney yesterday denied he had ever used intimidation.

However, Daniel Paul, representing the council, said he had been seen by police with a plastic cup "buzzing people" and asking for "any odds" near a cash point machine on Whitechapel in June 2001.

Mr Paul said: "People were trying to get out of your way. You were confronting them and asking them for money."

McCartney told the judge: "I was asking people for the time. I had coffee in my cup. When the police came there was no money in the cup.

"Why be aggressive with someone you are asking for something from. You don't get anywhere being abusive. I would ask people as they walk by. If they stop and give me change, I say thank-you. I don't stand in people's faces."

McCartney, currently serving an eight-month sentence at Walton prison for assaulting a police officer and theft, told the court he had sometimes resorted to begging after his Jobseekers' Allowance had been stopped when he failed to attend a Jobcentre.

The court also heard he had on occasions resisted arrest and officers had used CS spray to restrain him.

Defending, Robert Askey said: "Not on any occasions has Mr McCartney been stopped, arrested, charged or convicted of any public order offence."

The council is seeking an anti-social behaviour order to ban McCartney from the city centre.